larryni.me.uk » Fun

Susi Smartypants explains the Evolution

Laurent — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:43:55 +0000

Last month, in time for Darwin’s birthday, a new book was released in Germany called Susi Neunmalklug erklärt die Evolution. It’s Darwin for kids, a funny introduction to the theory of evolution written by Michael Schmidt-Salomon and illustrated by Helge Nyncke. And there’s a short video to go with:

There should be more educational videos like this.

I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m a bit surprised to see this coming from Germany. I didn’t think that the creationists were trying to get their foot into the school doors over there as well. It’s like a disease that needs to be eradicated!

(via gwup | die skeptiker)

Homemade vanilla extract

Laurent — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:41:32 +0000

I usually have a small bottle of proper vanilla extract in my cupboard that I use to add to coffe, baking, etc… I love the stuff! But it’s so damn expensive. At the end of December I came across a post on how to make your own vanilla extract, and it’s extremely simple:

Here’s what you need:
6 vanilla pods/beans
500 ml/2 cups vodka

Split the pods length-wise, put them in the bottle, top back on and leave it in a dark cupboard for at least 8 weeks. That’s it.

I got a half bottle of Tesco’s cheapest finest. I used 4 pods as a half bottle contains only 350ml.

I couldn’t help myself and stick the finger in today to taste. And damn, it tastes very nice! I might have to go and get another (bigger and better quality) bottle to get ready just for drinking. Yumm.

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Kiiking – Swinging in Estonia

Laurent — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:28:22 +0000

My palms got sweaty just watching this!

Kiiking on Wikipedia – Official Kiiking website

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Scrobble your music from S60 devices

Laurent — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:50:51 +0000

I was looking for a Symbian app to scrobble the tracks I play on my Nokia N95. After a quick search I found ASPY Player, written by Douglas. As you might have already guessed by the name it needs Python (PyS60) installed. Currently it’s still in beta (b4 released on April 9) and it only scrobbles tracks stored on your phone, streaming will hopefully come later. It’s hasn’t got the prettiest interface, but it gets the job done.

Another Python app is blastfm. This one lets you listen to your last.fm streams, complete with love, ban and skip functions. Or at least I think that’s what it does – after entering my username and password it kept crashing and never started up once. I’ll be keeping an eye out for future versions though.

The next one does not require Python. mobbler is similar to the official last.fm desktop client in that it runs in the background scrobbling the tracks you play with the S60 Music Player. It works great, once it finds an Internet connection it sends the tracks to your profile and then keeps on scrobbling ‘live’.

I’ve also found a great mashup using the flickr & last.fm webservices and GPS data running on Python. Check out the video presentation. It’s not really all that useful, but fun. There is no download available, it is a prototype developed by 4 international students at The Technical University of Denmark. But it gives an idea of the great possibilities webservices offer for mobiles.

I’m really surprised that last.fm doesn’t offer mobile clients yet. There are now so many people who exclusively use their phones/mobile devices to play music on the go. They could even make free tracks available to download and provide links so you can purchase tracks straight from your phone.

Do you know of any other last.fm apps/mashups for mobile devices? Add them in the comments.

Minesweeper The Movie

Laurent — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:31:20 +0000

You’ve been wasting hours and hours playing the game since you got your first computer. Now you can finally watch the movie: Minesweeper!

Priceless

LOLsquirrel

Laurent — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:41:33 +0000

I just couldn’t resist!

We haven’t had LOLsquirrels yet, have we?!

Make your own with roflbot.

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I CAN HAS LOLCODE?

Laurent — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:16:53 +0000

First the Internets gave us LOLcats. Then LOLgays. And LOLprez. Even Startrek got the LOL treatment. And there’s more, google for them or roll your own.

Now we have LOLcode. Yes, somebody actually went and turned the LOLcat language into a programming language!

HAI! This site provides community documentation of the emergent LOLCODE language. It is our hope that the examples can grow in a way that is both internally consistent and suggest a real, feasible computing language.

Here’s the obligatory ‘~~Hello~~ Hai World’ example:

HAI CAN HAS STDIO? VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!" KTHXBYE

When I first came across the site yesterday afternoon there wasn’t too much content. Now there are already quite a lot of user contributions to develop the code. There’s even a first compiler.

Don’t you just love the Internet?

Hangman

Laurent — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:58:57 +0000

Hangman

Hangman
provided by The Free Dictionary

Sackrace

Laurent — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:12:11 +0000

sackrace, originally uploaded by Johnny_X.

And don’t forget to check out the tags on the original Flickr page

Peace plan for Craggy Island row

Laurent — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:25:58 +0000

This is just hilarious!

A row has broken out between two remote Irish islands over an inaugural Father Ted festival next month.

Inis Mor, the largest of the three Aran Islands off County Galway, is planning a three-day “Friends of Ted” event.

They want to mark the ninth anniversary of the death of comic Dermot Morgan, the star of the Channel 4 series.

However, Inis Oirr, the smallest of the islands, believes it has a bigger claim over Father Ted because local scenes, including the Plassey shipwreck, are shown in the opening scenes of the hit comedy.

And how are they going to solve this row? With a 5-a-side football tournament!

“We thought they could play each other and the winner could be Craggy Island for 12 months while the runner-up could be Rugged Island, and they could play again next year on a home and away basis,” he says.

Father Ted is one of my favourite comedy shows. No matter how many times it is repeated (and it’s repeated a lot), I never get tired of it.

SXSW 2009 torrent